We won’t save rhinos by selling their horns

SOUTH AFRICA

Don Pinnock

DailyMaverick.co.za

South Africa’s government seems set on making the black rhino extinct, said Don Pinnock. There are only 5,000 of the mammals left in the wild, many of them in this country, and hundreds are killed each year by poachers, who sell rhino horn on the Asian market, where it’s used in traditional medicines. So it beggars belief that South Africa’s environmental affairs department now plans to ask the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to grant an exemption from the global ban on rhino horn sales. The department’s aim is to increase sales of horn taken from rhinos farmed by South African breeders, while cracking down further on poaching—to “stop the bad guys so the good guys can make a profit.” Yet selling legally harvested horn will only signal to the vast Asian market that it’s ethically OK to buy it and cause the market to balloon. The surge in demand—and price—will in turn spur poachers of wild rhinos to step up their slaughter. The department calls its plan demand management. That sounds smart, “but it’s nuts.” There’s a hidden backstory here and questions need to be asked. Why is a department focused on conservation being driven by market concerns? “Are brown envelopes involved?”